Megan's schooling

A few positive steps toward a challenging and fun education for Megan happened this week. On Friday, she attended her first district "pull-out program" for gifted kids, a calligraphy class. She was positively glowing when I picked her up, and chattered animatedly about what she had learned, and about the other two girls in the class, one of whom is called Eileen (which is Megan's middle name). She's been practising with her new calligraphy set ever since she got home from school on Friday. I'm delighted that her teacher managed to get her into this program. Next week she has the second part of the calligraphy class and will be starting a writing program as well. We haven't heard yet if there will be any other offerings this term, but it's something, and she's happy, which is all good.

While Megan was at the calligraphy program, we met with the child psychologist we were considering hiring to perform an educational assessment for Megan. Jeff and I both liked her and felt she would be a good fit for us, so we are going to go ahead with this lady (whose name is Meagan!). It should be interesting for all of us to get a more complete picture of Megan's abilities, and we are very hopeful that regardless of what schooling option she ends up with next year, this assessment will provide her teachers with ample information to create an individualized educational plan for Megan. We were also quite relieved to hear that many of the challenges we've found in parenting Megan are very common among "gifted" children (I hate that term, but unfortunately it's the common lingo for this kind of kid... so we are stuck with it for now). I feel like this report will give us a sort of road map to follow in the future - for too long now we've been travelling aimlessly around, trying lots of different directions to try and meet Megan's educational needs, and finding that none of them are quite right for her.